Any job in in the industry, requires you to be part of an organization, collaborate with a team, and work towards development of the company or organization. Biotechnology jobs are no exception. Along with the technical lab skills you have, there are certain soft skills that are needed to succeed in as a biotechnologist. To know more about these skills, read on.
Learning to understand research priorities
Research priorities are influenced by the existing problems which require solutions and/or market requirements. A crucial skill for a biotechnologist to succeed, the ability to determine research priorities is possible when you have a good understanding of existing and developing trends in the biotechnology sector. These include the required quality standards, regulatory changes and other legal related aspects. The mentioned factors have an impact on an organization’s strategic direction, as well as the resources and employees required to execute the any research work.
Understanding the importance of a project’s ROI
Just because a project seems worthy to pursue, it doesn’t mean it would benefit the company. Before a project is taken up, the company stakeholders must feel that the product would have a good market value, helps the company attract external investors or the prices of the stock to rise. Ultimately, the company should get a biotechnologist return on investment (ROI). In simple words, the company should be able to make profits off whatever they are marketing.
Factors that influence ROI, include –
- The amount of time required to finish the project, along with regulatory approval
- The amount of manpower required.
- The total cost of resources and other requirements like intellectual property
- The potential market and the sale price of the product developed
- Estimation of competition from similar products
Though it is not required to know exactly how to calculate an ROI, it is always important to have an idea of the concept and its repercussions.
Communication skills with non-technical stakeholders
Working as a biotechnologist not only requires you to communicate with other biotechnology professionals, but also ones without any background in biotechnology or any related subjects like the sales and marketing teams, and regulatory compliance teams. For effective communication, it is important that you practice putting the research you’re doing into simple, understandable language that a non-technical audience can understand, without using highly technical terms.
Ability of Assessing & Managing Risk
Risks in a project stem from two major sources – business related and research & development risks. Business related risks are related to the success and failure of the project. If the project is a success, then there would be more reach to customers and markets, along with a rise in share value. But if it doesn’t turn out like expected, and the projects fails, the first thing that happens is not able to being to achieve ROI. Secondly, the reputation of the organization is affected, along with the employee’s morale. Research & development risks are the ones related to product development and effects on the long run – how they might affect the consumers, environment and feasibility of acquiring the required resources.
Effective Management & Presentation of data
Managing data in an organized and accessible way is very crucial. Data should be sorted and stored in a way that it could be easily accessed and understood by other colleagues, even in the future. Even data generated that is not completely relevant to the ongoing project should be stored – they might be useful for upcoming projects. However, it is also to be remember there should be a balance between the data stored and the load on the systems and software. You won’t want to slow the systems by overloading too much information that might not be as useful.
Presenting data to the organization’s stakeholders is not just simple as creating a few graphs that show data of experimental or clinical trial results. It requires lots of background work – analyzing data to identify the ones relevant and important from a business perspective. The data should be able to be conveyable to all stakeholders to answer their queries about the potential of the product.
Remember that along with your technical laboratory skills, it is important to master soft skills as well. Only then you could become a complete biotechnologist.
